


and he watches you too. but, differently.

by odinstark



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Cutesy, Drunken Confessions, Everyone Thinks They're Together, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Good Morgana (Merlin), Hurt, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Merlin is a Little Shit, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, Oblivious, Protectiveness, Singing, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 20:52:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odinstark/pseuds/odinstark
Summary: currently fixated on this pairing so I decided to succumb to my mind and write this.





	and he watches you too. but, differently.

They all watched him. Of course they did. Not only was he a citizen of Camelot and the King's servant (and friend), he was Merlin.

Merlin, who suffered to no fool and had a smile for the rest. Merlin, who had patience to deal with Arthur and more to spare. Merlin who would take on a hundred men without a sword to protect his friends.

They all thought of his as a companion, a confidant, a friend of varying degrees. That didn't mean it didn't hurt them all the same to see him go down. And go down hard he did.

"Merlin!" Gwaine let out a harsh yell as the warlock collapsed to the ground, clutching a dark red, almost black, spot on his jacket, which was quickly spreading across the brown fabric. There was a bandit leering above him, a bloody dagger gripped in hand, looking as though to want a second chance at Merlin's weak form.

The long haired Knight doubled his efforts against the bandits as did the others but Leon was the first to Merlin and his attacker, in a spot isolated from the rest of the fighting. As the man flipped the blood drenched knife in his hand, Leon ran his sword through the man's chest, the tip coming straight out the otherside, skewering him on the blade. The man could do nothing but gargle to death on his own blood as he fell to the ground in a slumpen heap.

"Merlin!" Leon gasped as he rolled Merlin on his back to see if there was still life in his eyes.

Blood dribbled in a feeble trail from his pink lips, staining his snow white skin. But his blue eyes were bright as ever, seeking out the Knight's eyes.

"Hey..Leon.." he sighed and let his bloody hands fall to the forest floor as Leon ripped off his cloak and wrapped his lower torso in it to stop the bleeding, exposing his silver chain mail to the shining sun.

"Thank god you're still alive," the man tied the cloth as tightly as possible without hurting him,

"The others may have killed _me_ if I found you dead."

Merlin laughed as loudly as one could with blood in their throat. It wasn't very loud.

The other knights disposed of their adversaries quickly and rushed to the two side, hopping over the corpses of the bandits. They made quick work of securing Merlin to his horse and returning to the castle, the hunt forgotten. It was Leon who rode beside him, watching carefully to catch any sign of him slipping off the steed, any sign of him bleeding more.

Leon didn't let any of the other knights carry Gaius' chambers, even though Arthur and Percival offered. He couldn't...let him go. He felt obligated as Merlin's friend and the first one to his side to be the one. That didn't stop Gaius from immediately kicking him out of the room to heal Merlin in complete silence. The others found him paving the hallway outside the chamber and they stayed, to wait on news, to comfort Leon.

All but Leon, and Arthur who was called away an hour previously to deal with a important issue of the crown, were nodding off to sleep on their place sitting against the wall. Leon had not stopped pacing the last hours, running tracks into the stone flagging. Finally Gaius allowed them inside, and Leon was first through the door, unsurprisingly. To the knights' surprise, Merlin was wide awake with a thick bandage wrapped around his bare, scarred torso, under his bedcovers. Another white bandage encircled his head, telling of a head injury that Leon hadn't spotted.

Gwaine and Lancelot claimed the space on opposite sides of the foot of Merlin's mattress, Elyan and Percival dragged in chairs and Leon sat on his bedside table, his leg pulled up, with his head wresting on it. Merlin looked terrible, he was paler than usual, sweating bullets and of course bandages weren't a sign of good health. But he was smiling.

"How can you be in such a good mood after all this?" Elyan asked, coming to the same conclusion Leon had only moments previously.

The man smiled brighter and glanced around the room,

"Because I realised that you lot actually have emotions. Look you're all so worried about me."

Silence reigned for a moment before Percival began to chuckle under his breath, which got Gwaine going, then Leon, Lancelot and Elyan not far behind. Merlin joined the laughter soon after, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his head thrown back, leaving his pale neck exposed. And if Leon felt something looking at him like that? Well nobody needed to know.

It had been over a month since Merlin had been stabbed and he'd been back to work starting a few days previously, but that didn't stop Leon taking every free moment to watch him.

He wasn't alone, the others did too. Lancelot and Gwaine especially. Arthur was always watching him but Leon knew it was as Merlin, servant, in public. Lancelot and Gwaine always saw him as Merlin, friend, and so looked for any sign of Merlin becoming tired or reopening his healing stitches.

Leon wanted to consider himself the same but he felt he couldn't call himself a friend like the other two were. Merlin had found them and brought them to Camelot and not once had they left his side or done anything against him. He couldn't live up to that.  
He didn't deserve to call himself Merlin's friend.

"Leon?" a voice at his side spoke up.

"Hmm?" he replied and turned to see the object of his thoughts.

"Are you okay?" Merlin asked as he tried to push himself up to sit on the fence beside him. He struggled as to not disturb his wound and so Leon slipped his arm around Merlin's bicep and pulled him up,

"Thanks."

"No problem," the knight answered as he glanced to the side to the dark haired man who was watching a dog run around the field below them, being chased by a gaggle of children from the lower town,

" I am. What of you? Are you okay? "

"I am," Merlin mimiced with a coy smile,

"I didn't know you were so worried."

"I'm always worried about you," Leon admitted as the sun made its descent, painting the sky a golden yellow. The atmosphere changed with his words, to one of a serious nature.

The warlock was silent for long moment. Then the bubble was broken.

"Worried enough to do Arthur's washing for a week?"

"God no, nothing would make that worried," the two shared a laugh as Arthur appeared in the distance, telling for Merlin to follow him.

Merlin slipped off the gate and began the walk back to the castle but not before turning around and saying,

"Good talk."

Leon's arm got colder as the man walked away. He hadn't realised his arm had stayed interlocked with Merlin's the entire time. And suddenly sitting on the fence, the place he usually came when he wanted solitude, he felt lonely.

Lancelot watched, a lot. He was an intelligent man and an observant one too, at that. He noticed things many didn't and that set apart from other men who had the same skill of the sword as he did. Usually he used his talents for tracking but occasionally they'd slip into everyday situations.

He noticed Leon sought out Merlin a lot, far more than he had before he was stabbed and Lancelot didn't have anything against that. He too had done the same. But as time went on, the instances only got longer, less sporadic more planned.

Lancelot had caught them more than a few times sneaking away from the kitchen during the night, with a jug of wine and some fruit pies in their arms. He never followed them, they deserved privacy. Lancelot just wished Merlin would tell him they had gotten together.

Elyan and Gwen had sat down for dinner in her house, a weekly tradition they had started since Elyan arrived back in Camelot and now lived in the knights' quarter, when a knock came at the door. Gwen answered it to see a anxious Leon at the door, panic flaring in his chest.

"Is Merlin here?" the Knight asked, looking past her into the room, looking for the serving boy.

"No, l haven't seen Merlin since yesterday," Gwen answered as her brother stood up and came to the door frame.

"Why, what's wrong?" Elyan asked, already knowing the answer.

"He's missing. He didn't turn up for his duties this mornings and Gaius hasn't seen him since dinner yesterday evening," Leon explained as Elyan picked up his sword from beside the fireplace and rushed outside to join the pack searching for the dark haired man.

They found him in a shack in the lowertown, drugged out of his mind. It seemed he was dosed with various sleeping potions, all shoddy in their making Gaius confirmed, but that didn't make the situation any better. The sleepy man was overjoyed when the Knights had come to his rescue, arresting the woman who when they arrived was making unwanted...advances towards him.

Elyan couldn't help but notice the way Merlin clung to Leon. It made him smile to know his friends were happy. Finally something was going right.

Morgana was a longtime friend of Leon. She liked to think she knew him quite well, better then most of the Knights at least. She knew the way he acted when he was sad, when he was angry, when he was happy.

And she especially knew the way he acted when he was around someone he liked. She teased him about it mercilessly when they were in their teens. But what he had with Merlin was...special, she decided. She didn't want to ruin it. That didn't mean she wouldn't tease them when they went public.

Gwaine wasn't as stupid as people would like to say he was, with his habit of becoming drunk all the time and all. It actually was the perfect disguise. A lot of people let things slip when they thought he was nothing more than a drunk, who would forget what they said by the morning.

He had gotten many a piece of interesting blackmail on his fellow knights that way. Like a story of Percival trying to woo a girl he liked as a child and ending up falling into a lake or the way Elyan confessed to having spending all of his first pay to replace a favourite vase of Gwen's he had broken accidently while cooking.

But when Leon let a particular tidbit of information leave his liqour covered lips, which pertained to his feelings about Merlin, Gwaine wisely pretended to forget it. He wasn't stupid after all.

Percival was a quiet man by nature. He often found himself in the library, enjoying the solitude and the latest book Geoffrey had recommended him. Merlin often joined him, but never for too long. Just enough to pull a tomb of Magical Creatures or something along that line, search for something specific and run back out the door.

He noticed the man began to stay longer, actually reading for pleasure and sometimes even borrowing the book and bringing it with him. Sometimes he would see the same books in Leon's hands, as he sometimes read in the morning in the castle grounds before training. Merlin was obviously passing his recommendations onto Leon, as Geoffrey did to him.

But walking past Leon's room one day, he knew that it was different. He closed the door quietly, nobody had to see Merlin resting his head in Leon's lap as the Knight read aloud to him. It wasn't any of their business.

Gwen had a knack for knowing the gossip of the castle. She was just such an approachable person that most of the other servants couldn't help but spill their guts to her when she asked how their day was. She recounted most of it back to Morgana when they lay in bed at night, which had them in stitches for hours.

But then a lot of the gossip began being about Merlin. And Merlin's relationship to Leon. She stopped listening then, even going so far to chastise some of the bolder servants who speculated about them so openly. They soon learned not to it again when Gwen spoke against them, she was scary when she needed to be. No one deserved to have the secrets of their relationship aired for all to see.

Besides, Merlin was her friend. What kind of friend would she be if she didn't protect his reputation? When Merlin decided to tell her about Leon, she will be there with open arms.

Arthur was the last to it, like all things. That didn't mean he didn't see it when he did. A lot of things began to make sense. The amount of times he's had to pry Merlin away from conversations with Leon to do some small task he could do himself but likes to make Merlin do as it annoys him. When Leon would offer water to Merlin first before the rest when they were out hunting. The way the two always took the same lookout shift and when Arthur would wake up in the dead of night when nature calls only to return from the trees to see the duo laughing together, sharing a blanket by the campfire.

Said servant was busy tiding around Arthur's chambers as he wrote a speech which he was to address the court with next week. The man was singing under his breath, a song Arthur recognised to be Leon's favourite tavern tune. He was quite good actually and he had none of the drunken slur that usually followed the lyrics when others sung it.

"You seem happy today, Merlin," the King smiled as Merlin popped his head up from Arthur's bedside where he was picking up as mess of papers.

"I am, sire."

"Date with Leon tonight then?" Arthur replied as Merlin seemed to choke on air.

"Wh-Wh-What?"

Arthur dipped his quill in ink as Merlin's face flushed red as the bedcovers,

"Don't play innocent with me, Merlin. I know."

"L-Leon and I...are n-not courting!" the dark haired man exclaimed as he crossed the room to Arthur's desk.

"Really? Could have had me fooled."

"We're...W-We're **not** together, Arthur. We're friends, that's all."

"Mmm, okay."

Merlin left the room after that.

How dare Arthur asume that of him and Leon! They were just really close friends, and that was all it was and going to be. Totally.

Grumbling as stomped down the corridor with his head down, he didn't notice he was about to crash straight into someone.

Merlin almost crumbled to the floor but strong hands caught his hand and pulled him to his feet. It was Leon, of course, who was in just a sour mood as he was.

"You okay?" Leon offered.

"No. You?" Merlin shook his head.

"No. What's wrong?" The knight prodded, searching in his eyes for the answer.

"Arthur thinks we're together. It's ridiculous! We're just friends!" 

Leon's eyebrows shot up and he let out a noise of agreement, 

"Gwen seems to think the same! I agree, it's ridiculous and frankly none of their business."

"Exactly!" Merlin threw his hands up in the air, dragging Leon's up with it as he hadn't let it go yet, 

"This...may be part of the reason why."

"Possibly," the blonde laughed but didn't let go. They walked down the corridor hand in hand towards Merlin's chambers, raving about the speculations about their relationship. 

Merlin said goodbye at the door and stomped across the tiles towards his room before everything clicked. The smiles, the touches, the talks. He ran back to the door and opened it see Leon about to knock on the wood. 

He dropped his hand and waited with a hopeful look on his face that Merlin was sure he shared. There was few beats of silence before, 

"I guess we're doing this?" 

"I think we are," Leon spoke in answer. 

Merlin wasn't sure who initiated but at this moment he didn't care. He didn't care they were standing in the cold doorframe of Gaius' workspace where anyone could see them. All he cared about was his hand in Leon's hair and Leon's mouth on his lips. 

"Finally!" a voice rung out. The two jumped apart to see Gaius in the corridor behind them, his medicine bag in hand.

"G-Gaius!" the two stuttered in shock.

"I was wondering when you two would finally get some sense and get on with it. But I don't want it in my chambers. Shoo! Go somewhere else!" the old man pushed them out into the hall and shut the door behind him.

Merlin only had to look at Leon before they started laughing. They laughed all the way to Leon's chambers where they started it all up over again. And if Merlin stayed the night? Well, no one was none the wiser.

Except Gaius, the grump.


End file.
